We got to breakfast this morning! …just.
The restaurant in our hotel is pretty fancy. Unfortunately I left my camera in the room, but I’ll take some tomorrow. The selection was not as good as my last hotel, but it was alright. The atmosphere is pretty cool!
After breakie we got in contact with Julia. She wanted to meet up with us today, as tomorrow she is going to China and wont return to Hong Kong until Friday. The plan was to meet us at our hotel at around 4:00, so in the mean time, Michelle and I went down the street. Originally we thought we wouldn’t have enough time to really do much, so we thought it would be best to keep it local. We had a walk up Nathan Road and headed towards Jordan to take a look at the market there.
They were still setting up and there wasn’t too much going on. It was actually a little boring, so then we agreed on taking a quick train ride to Mong Kok.
Mong Kok was so much more alive and there were people, shops and stalls everywhere. There was quite a bit of electronics here too. I ended up buying a 16GB SD card for about $30. The streets soon turned into markets and there were stalls selling cloths, dvds, trinkets, “copy-watch”s (knock offs) and toys so we spent a bit of time wondering around.
It was getting a bit late, so we headed back to the station to go meet with Julia.
The train rides were pretty cheap, it was only a couple of stops, but each way cost about $4 - $5 HKD (55 - 65 cents Aussie).
Julia met us at our hotel and after some chit-chat we headed to a nearby massage parlour. This place was pretty professional looking and was apparently a 6 star place! It seemed like they only had one sort of oil though, which was a “woman’s leg slimming oil” (or something like that) and so if I wanted a massage, because I’m a man, it would have been a dry massage - which I don’t really enjoy, so I left Julia and Michelle there to get pampered and I headed off to explore a bit more.
There was a nearby shopping centre called “The One” - so I went in there and looked around, got a fruit crush thing, read my guide book, found the electronics floors, did some window shopping and played some xbox, then headed back to meet the girls.
From there we headed to Causeway Bay to meet Jillian for dinner. Causeway bay reminded me somewhat of Shibuya, alot of people and shops everywhere! It was a pretty nice area.
We wanted to go to a place where we could have some more traditional Hong Kong food, so Julia lead the way. We ended up ordering about 5 dishes to share between us, which were pretty good, but the one thing that stood out was the “Pineapple bun” for dessert - which doesn’t actually have any pineapple :P
It was like a really sweet bread roll with butter! It got its name because the roll (supposedly) looks a bit like a pineapple with the shard bits on the outside.
After dinner we kept walking through the town and did a little more shopping before stopping for some really nice ice-cream. They had all sorts of flavours, including Durian, Black Sesame Seeds and Yakult! I got a Blueberry Cheesecake Yoghurt flavour and it was impressive!
After ice cream we said our goodbyes as Julia and Jillian were heading off to China tomorrow. We will get to see Julia again on Friday, but Jillian is flying out from there and wont be spending any more time in Hong Kong. So we parted our separate ways and headed back to our hotel.
On the way back I ended up buying an “Octopus Card” - a prepaid train ticket. It costs $150 HKD, which includes $100 of value to spend on the train and a $50 deposit which I can get refunded. I figured $150 is only about $20 AUD, so I might even keep it as a souvenir… maybe.